Little Fire Stone
by Wr3n
Summary: The Dragonborn has denied her role in Skyrim and has long ago fled from Whiterun. But, while heading for home near Markarth one night, she knows she is being followed... *Started late at night! Read on if you're into it!*
1. Little Fire Stone

**S**he bristled as the sound of horse-steps clopped closer on the road, sounding out over even the keening voice of the rainstorm. As the shady bulk of a horse and rider gradually drew by, she left the slick cropping of rock she hid behind. "You!" the woman cried, laying a hand on one of her swords. "You are following me."

The tall figure atop the dark horse, instantly reined in the animal upon the appearance of the quarry, there on the road. The cloaked and hooded figure stared down at the small woman, waiting on the road.

"Why do you follow me, stranger?" the drenched woman on the road asked commandingly.

The figure atop the horse flung back its cloakhood. "I follow you from Whiterun, my Thane," the person, obviously a woman, answered. "You are my charge, and I shall follow wherever it is that you may choose to go…"

The smaller cloaked, dripping wet woman standing on the road shook her head adamantly. "Go back where you came from, woman!" she shouted over the pummeling rain. "I need you not. So, go away!"

The woman upon the horse seemed to unsurely look away for a moment. "I will not," she replied back over the voice of the storm winds. "You are appointed my Thane, my lady. And I simply cannot forsake my task so easily. Please," the woman uttered, "Let me accompany you this night. I have traveled long and am as weary-sore as yourself. Let us talk together come the morning, my Thane."

The smaller woman on the road stared up at the larger woman upon the black horse. "Do not call me, 'Thane'," the woman demanded. "I am no such thing to you, or any free-person of this land."

The woman upon the horse seemed to nod her wet-head a little. "Even as you wish," she called over the storm, "I shall do it!"

"Well, then I grant you my invitation, stranger. You shall lay with me in my dwelling, and you and I will chat long, come morning, as you have said."

"I am grateful," said the woman on the horse. "Thank you."

The small, cloaked woman began to walk her way up the road which trailed over a slippery, badly cobbled hillock.

"Please," the woman on the black horse called out once more. "Ride along with me, and we shall reach your home the faster!"

The small woman turned around and regarded the woman on the horse. "I have forgotten your name, stranger," she called out inexplicably.

The woman on the horse bowed her head. "I am Lydia, your Housecarl from Whiterun, my lady."

"Spare me the usage of your titles," the woman retorted. "I will ride with you, as you say, Lydia."

The woman on the horse, or Lydia as she was rightly named, nodded her head, then she reached out her hand as the smaller woman approached her soaking horse. "I welcome you, Sumnyot Paitr, in sharing the saddle with me," she murmured cordially, smilingly.

As Lydia pulled her Thane, Sumnyot, easily up into the saddle, the smaller woman sighed contentedly. "How is it that you remember my full name?" she asked. "Yet, I could not even recognise your face, or your horse upon seeing them?"

Lydia clucked her tongue and her horse obediently sidled onwards up the cobbled road. "You are my first patron, lady," Lydia replied. "I shall remember you always! From our first meeting and each point onwards."

Sumnyot, the smaller woman, huffed reprovingly. "God's curse this land's sentiments!" she cried over a roll of deep thunder above. "I have not asked for your services, Lydia, nor did I ever accept them. Do not think I will allow you to stay alongside me longer than this one night!"

Lydia's horse halted for a moment. "Please, tell me where am I going, lady?" Lydia asked upon reaching a fork in the road.

"Keep on," Sumnyot called from behind Lydia, gesturing with her hand dismissively. "I dwell by the river's edge 'neath this little hillock."

Lydia nudged her horse forward again, and she carefully leaned back a little while her horse descended carefully down the slippery, mud-slick and rain wetted hill. Pressed against her patroness, Lydia turned her head as she spoke. "Perhaps I make myself useful to you, my lady?" she yelled over the voice of the driving winds and the pelting rain. "Would you allow me to stay at your side then?"

Sumnyot shook her head to herself. "If you somehow prove your usefulness to me _before_ tomorrow's midday," she offered dully into Lydia's ear, "Then, I shall _think_ about this matter."

Lydia turned her head back round and straightened herself within the saddle. Looking about the heavy darkness, she wiped the rain from her eyes and realised she was, indeed, seeing the night-darkened shapes of a large tent, a soaked and unused campfire and a few other unknowable structures in the distance. "Is this your dwelling ahead, my Thane?" Lydia shouted.

Sumnyot shook her soaked, cloaked head behind the Housecarl. "For the love of, Y'ffre!" she yelled back over a lightning strike. "Call me not, your Thane! I am not this thing to you, do you understand?"

Lydia remained dismally quieted for a moment, then she finally responded. "I...understand," she mumbled dejectedly, barely loud enough though, to hear. "You call upon the old Bosmeri god, Y'ffre…" she hailed politely. "Are you a disciple then, of this heathen-idol?"

Sumnyot nodded unperturbedly behind Lydia as the horse beneath the both of them drew ever closer to the tent in the distance. "I am of Bosmeri-blood myself, woman," she answered bluntly, "Aye. I owe the gift of honest blood and the wisdom of my mother within me, to the Wood Elven peoples. My allegiance and honour is to their gods, though I do not know what that it is worth from me. And yes," Sumnyot added, "This is my dwelling-place ahead, here."

"But you have a distinctly Imperial surname, my lady," Lydia pointed out wonderingly.

"Yes. I am the cast-off, the dross of a bastard Imperial child, Lydia," Sumnyot spat plainly. "My would-be Imperial father left my Bosmeri mother pregnant and destitute. And he left her to raise me alone as well. A half-breed child ridiculed and mocked, dishonourable simply by birth!" Sumnyot laughed heartlessly behind Lydia. "Here, am I still your wonderful Thane in your heart now, Whiterun-woman?" she asked.

Lydia remained quieted once more, but only for the scant moment of a passing heartbeat. "Your lineage matters not, to me!" she answered sincerely. "I was merely curious as to how you procured such contradicting names, my Thane."

"Announce me your Thane, once again," Sumnyot menaced easily, "And I shall cut your throat! I am no man or woman's lord here in these lands!"

Lydia turned her head concernedly and nodded. "I am truly sorry!" she yelled over a sharp clap of white-lightning. "It is only that all my life I have been _habitually_ trained for these moments. But, please forgive me my incompetence against you, my lady."

Sumnyot waved out a hand. "Ah!" she grated. "You are stubborn even still!" she shouted. "How shall I possibly keep you with me 'till dawn, while you vex me so? Treat me not like your lord, lady or patron, I beg of you! I shall not repeat myself again, either!"

Lydia silently slowed her horse then, and Sumnyot gracefully jumped down from the saddle. Then stalking off towards her tent-dwelling, she left Lydia without a single word's notice. Lydia stared at the small, lithely retreating figure of her patroness, a little dumbfounded, while she herself dropped from her saddle. Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, Lydia began unsaddling her horse and unpacking her traveling things.

While Lydia relieved her horse, it seemed Sumnyot took to go about lighting her lanterns within her large tent. And soon inside, Lydia could see, with her cold bones starting to ache and her frigid, fatigued body shivering yearningly at the sight of heat, Sumnyot also lit a small cooking-fire within the tent as well. While Lydia fixedly stuck in to her work, at last lifting the wetted saddle and blanket off from her horse's sweating back, she saw a shadow flit alongside her.

"I will take your bags and things on into the tent," Sumnyot suddenly shouted over the keening wind. "You may dry your saddle inside as well, and there is a bundle of rope I will give you for your horse to be tethered with for the night."

Lydia, marvelling helplessly at her master's stealth, simply nodded her head. "Thank you, my lady," she murmured, confoundedly holding the saddle in her strong arms and staring as Sumnyot traipsed past, carrying an armload of satchels and haversacks that Lydia would have thought impossible for the littler woman to carry all at once.

But, Lydia simply shook her head, then followed her patroness on, into the large, warmly lit tent. Lydia laid her horse's saddle down upon the grassy floor within the tent-dwelling, then she laid down her horse's blanket and the wetted reins. Sumnyot, off in another corner, still shrouded in a soaking night-blue coloured cloak, was dropping Lydia's remaining bags rather unceremoniously onto the ground.

Sumnyot ambled off into the darkness after, leaving from the opposite opening of the tent, and she reappeared again a moment afterwards, unexpectedly behind Lydia.

"Here is the rope to tether you horse," Sumnyot mumbled. Lydia started and turned around to face the short, very quiet-footed Imperial-Bosmeri woman.

"You walk the night like a demon, my lady," Lydia breathed with a smile, reaching out a hand for the proferred bundle of rope.

Sumnyot simply seemed to stare, as Lydia could still not quite see her Thane's face, because of her vacuous, enshrouding hood. "It is very loud this night," Sumnyot explained. "Any fool could sneak about unheard in such weather, really. If he or she so wished..."

Lydia smiled feebly, then she pressed her way past the half-breed woman to go and tie off her horse to some nearby tree, hearty shrub or bit of rock somewhere. Sumnyot, twisting, quietly watched her would-be Housecarl fade away into the night's darkness and its powerful rain. "Hmm…" she burred to herself. "As blindly loyal as the hounds of Markarth," she whispered pensively. Sumnyot pulled her cloakhood back and began unbuckling her sodden cloak's securing bone pin.

Lydia reappeared shortly after, as Sumnyot uncaringly cast her slop-of-a-cloak onto the grassy ground. Lydia had forgotten what the small, odd woman looked like, and she found herself staring furtively while Sumnyot Paitr, her half-breed Thane, began stripping off salvaged pieces of simple fur and foresworn armour. Lydia vaguely remembered the woman's strangely angular face, so unlike a true Imperial's. Her large blackish coloured eyes, full mouth and long, black braided hair. And there was the faint white face-paint, shaped like a large triangle spanning, but not dominating, the woman's alluring, somehow mysteriously bemusing face.

Sumnyot smirked as she began unbuttoning her fur jerkin. "Are you staring at my ears, Lydia?" she mumbled interestedly.

Lydia, still dripping wet with rain herself, blinked her green eyes. "Ah…" she whispered awkwardly. "No, my lady, of course not." But now that the small, boorishly undressing, woman mentioned her ears, Lydia found herself helplessly looking at them. And she understood then, why Sumnyot was seen in Whiterun, always wearing a fur hat or a hood. Her ears were indeed a little strange. Ever so slightly longer than was usual, very nearly on the verge of becoming pointed at the top. But, Lydia mulled, it was such a subtle thing, she doubted anyone ever truly noticed if attention was not drawn to them specifically.

Sumnyot stripped her jerkin from off her body and, flinging it aside too, she began slipping off her fur greaves and skirt. Lydia, blushing for her patroness' sake, turned her head, but not before idly glimpsing a look at Sumnyot's lean, toned body, her small, firm breasts and muscular thighs. Lydia shook her head, water dripping from her long, dark hair as she did. She found herself bending then, before the tiny fire inside the tent and she eagerly stretched out her slender hands, warming them near the flickering, small flames.

"Why did you follow me?" Sumnyot asked lightly from behind Lydia's bent, cloaked back. "Did your Jarl send you to chase after me?"

Lydia smirked at the question. She flexed her strong swordswoman's hands and pushed them out, just a little nearer to the flames of the fire. "No," she answered calmly. "I pled for the Jarl to allow me to leave him. I came after you of my own accord, my lady."

"Why?" Sumnyot asked, her voice was suddenly sounding out directly behind Lydia. "Why did you do this thing?"

Lydia, recoiling once more from her master's sheer quietness of foot, glanced over her shoulder at the very nearly naked woman. Sumnyot nimbly, soundlessly ushered past Lydia and sat down next to her on the grassy ground, clothed only in her scant underclothes. Lydia, heart bucking, looked away. "I chose to follow you, my lady, because I felt it was my only chance to fulfill my duty as a Housecarl." Lydia frowned softly as she gazed meditatively into the burning, red coals of the fire. "I was trained all my life to become a Housecarl to a Thane," Lydia murmured quietly. "I was at last ready, my time came, and I was finally given, into _your_ service." Lydia's glimmering green eyes darted while she thought. "When you refused me, I…" Lydia pointedly chose to look over her shoulder at her listening patroness then. "I simply felt I _had_ to follow you, nonetheless. It is my duty, my want, my lady. That is all and nothing more." Lydia's gaze roved over her patroness openly.

And Sumnyot, holding her Housecarl's stare in kind, nodded curtly. Her small black braids flicked over her bared shoulders and muscular arms. "I understand this feeling you have," Sumnyot replied. "But I still do not wish to have a Housecarl, nor a companion of any suit, at my side..."

Lydia looked away dolefully at her Thane's words. "You yourself said, that I may still prove my worth, my lady…" Lydia reminded gently as she gaped absently at the fire before her. "Do you digress upon our agreement made on the road? If so, I shall leave you now, rather than later."

Sumnyot smiled at Lydia's words. "Dare you grow so suddenly flippant with me, stranger?" she mocked delightedly. "Here now, that is no way to soothe a soul you wish to sway!"

"Please, do not tease me," Lydia uttered, a little red-faced and shaking her rain-wetted head. "Tell me true, my lady, does the offer you gave me still stand?" Lydia turned to look into her patroness' dark, glimmering eyes.

And Sumnyot's smile deepened hearteningly after a silent moment between them. "Yes," she answered with a deep nod. "I am a woman of my word, Lydia. Now then, you must attend me. Take off your cloak, this tin-suit you have on and dry your hair. Then you may come lie down with me." Sumnyot stood up then and nakedly made her way off, over to a darkened corner where her bed laid out upon the grassy ground within the tent.

Lydia, suddenly bemused, faltering and unsure, simply sat for a long moment. Then cocking her head, she decided to ask just what the half-breed woman had meant. "My lady?" she questioned feebly. "Would you not prefer that I kept watch over the entrances of your house, while _you_ sleep?"

Lydia heard Sumnyot laugh over in the darkened bed-corner. "I shall hear any mischief-makers and pad-foots long before _you _do, Nord!" Sumnyot called plainly. "It is _I_ who has been sneaking upon you, and watching you all this day, is this not so?" she asked, with the notes of a smile lingering in her voice. "Why, by Y'ffre, do you think I would bother to ask you to watch over my house, when I can do so myself and with far more competence?" Sumnyot laughed again then. "Now, as my guest, do as I have asked and come here, woman!"

Lydia's pretty face pulled into wondering frown. And, begrudgingly, she took off her cloak, then began obediently stripping off her steel armour piece by piece, until she stood only in her loose jerkin and pantaloons. Sighing unsurely, and blushing quite profusely, Lydia stalked over towards the bed-corner that her patroness had retreated to. Sumnyot laid bare in her underclothes upon the many thick bear furs covering her pallet, and she smiled at Lydia winningly when she at last drew near.

"Come," Sumnyot offered easily. "Lay alongside me, and we shall sleep warmly and long together. It has been far too many-a-night I have slept with the hard, hot stones taken from the fire. I will enjoy a body next to mine, if anything."

Sensing her would-be Housecarl's stubborn uncertainty, Sumnyot sat up, reprovingly clucking her tongue, and she grasped at Lydia's warm, slender hand. Sumnyot carefully pulled Lydia down into her bed, then laid herself down. "Ah," Sumnyot sighed, pulling the fur coverlets over herself and Lydia. "Do not worry. I shall not _bed_ you, Whiterun-woman," Sumnyot murmured tiredly. "But, you must still prove yourself to me as you said you so wished to. So, come closer."

Lydia carefully sidled in a little closer, until she could vaguely feel her patroness' naked body heat emanating against her own full body. "Ah...this is all very unusual, my lady," Lydia whispered.

"Again," Sumnyot chided quietly. "You are stubborn still. I am not so sure you would make me a fine Housecarl, Lydia. You are already combating me upon nearly every turn I produce to test you with…"

Lydia, flustered and a little deflated, boldly moved far closer to her patroness than she would have dared to have done before. The taller Nord woman fitted herself easily into Sumnyot's slender body, and was unsurprised when Sumnyot reached back and took hold of her arm, wrapping it round herself. Lydia held Sumnyot close, as she was wordlessly bade to, close enough that she could smell the rain in the half-breed woman's braids, and upon her lissom, warming elfin body.

"I was never before warned of _this_ happenstance, my lady," Lydia murmured against Sumnyot's bare, sun-kissed shoulder.

"Ah," Lydia's patroness sighed, lacing her fingers between Lydia's, whose hand laid selectively upon Sumnyot's slim belly. "Quiet, my little fire-stone," she whispered. "And sleep."


	2. I Shall Not Kick You

**I**n the frail golden wake of very early dawn, Lydia seemed to stir a little, as an unexpectedly cold length slid into bed swiftly alongside her. Sumnyot, bracing herself frigidly, puffing and blowing from sudden chill, pressed herself close into her bed-partner's tall, still very sleep-warmed body. Lydia frowned concernedly, wondering vaguely at how she did not hear or even feel her patroness leave the bed, as Sumnyot shivered slightly against her.

"God's, you are so cold," Lydia croaked questioningly. "You feel as though you have gone outside, my lady." Lydia swallowed thickly, as her voice was low, broken and unsure from her sleep's disuse.

Sumnyot reached back and took Lydia's arm over her once again, shifting ever closer, while her lean, feline body trembled from cold. "Ah," she blustered resignedly. "Must I recite myself, and keep begging you, not to use the titles of city-folk and rich men on me?" she whispered tiredly through her teeth. "I have _given_ you my name freely, Lydia, so that you may _use_ it. Please, do this for me now, and spare us both these townsmen pleasantries."

Lydia, somewhat sour-faced from an early morning's scolding, pursed her lips. "Then where," she murmured, a little darkly, "did you go, lady Sumnyot?" she tried.

Lydia felt her patroness take in a deep, burdened breath. "By Y'ffre," Sumnyot muttered quietly, shaking her braided-head a little. "You are infuriatingly stubborn, my bed-fellow." After a small silent moment, Sumnyot touched calmingly though, at Lydia's hand lying flat upon the middle of her goose-fleshing chest. "I suppose this is enough to satisfy me, nevertheless. Here," she chided suddenly with a small grin, "you are still as obstinate as a rock giant's herd of mammoths, Lydia. How shall I even think to allow such a Housecarl as you, to follow me about, troubling me all the day with your 'my lord' and 'my lady' speak?"

Lydia sneered at her patroness' previous analogy, mentioning giant's and mammoths. "You have yet to answer me," she reminded gently, changing the topic.

"Your mount was whickering, in his own way for aid, outside my tent," Sumnyot mumbled sleepily, and she yawned loudly. "His good animal nose served him well this morn, and he smelled out the stink of the prowling wolves up in the hills." Sumnyot twined her fingers between Lydia's. "I like your horse, Lydia," she whispered smilingly. "He is a good-beast. And he is safe now. He eats soft, sweet grass nearer to my tent. I shall not let the wolves prey upon him while you and he are here with me at my home."

Lydia blinked thoughtfully for a moment. She smiled tiredly, gratefully. "I thank you for doing what you have done, my Thane," Lydia acknowledged sincerely.

Sumnyot though, shook her braided-head. "I find your wrong-headedness is beginning to wear upon my very heart, Lydia," Sumnyot warned. "You have pronounced me your 'Thane' once again! I shall simply _have_ to cut your throat now," she jibed. "I am an honest woman of my word, so it is that I shall have to divest you of your life. Feather-headed woman..."

"I am sorry," Lydia griped, and she laid her forehead repentantly into Sumnyot's clean-smelling black hair. "Forgive a woman her ingrained habits."

"Ah, but you shall be all the sorrier when I cut your throat out after breakfast. I like this idea a little better than doling out more forgiveness where it should no longer be due," Sumnyot countered.

Lydia helplessly let out a deep laugh. "You would _feed_ me before trying to slay me?" she asked interestedly.

"Well and well!" Sumnyot chimed curiously, through wisps of her own laughter. "You use this word 'try'," Sumnyot then patted reprovingly at Lydia's hand upon her. "If I did not know better, I would think you have already decided to yourself, that I could not ever hope to best you in a fair fight, Lydia."

Lydia, smiling, remained quieted for a moment, thinking a little before replying. "It is only that you are such a small woman, lady Sumnyot..." Lydia mumbled. "You seem to be quiet and very fast, and you have shown already, that you can be a deadly force under the cover of night. But," she murmured, "My _one_ sword-arm alone that lies upon you now, is worth more in strength than the very _legs_ upon your whole body, lady."

Sumnyot huffed dully, unperturbedly. "A small, starving bandit can be the clever bane of a giant who keeps large stores of food for himself," Sumnyot muttered. "Lightning quick, hatchling slaughterfish feast nightly upon large hapless swimmers. Feisty, hard-shelled mudcrabs fight, always, to their wretched deaths no matter whom they are facing. And even a small mountain cat of the woods can kill a great cave bear if he has to..."

Sumnyot turned her head a little to catch Lydia's attention behind her. "Tell me not, my bed-fellow, that you are a proud and senseless woman, who judges another warrior's worth simply by their size and appearance?"

Lydia smiled to herself. "I tell you true, that I am no such woman, lady Sumnyot," she replied. "I was simply thinking my passing thoughts to you aloud. That is all, and nothing more."

"Well, this is good," Sumnyot answered smilingly. "Now I shall not have to kick you from my bed for ignorance."

Lydia smiled confusedly, interestedly. "A sense of simple impartiality among warriors means this much to you then?" Lydia asked.

"Yes, much," Sumnyot replied with a nod. "As it is for any man or woman, who is truly a warrior in their heart-of-hearts. If not for this graciousness among some peoples, I would have despaired, and drowned myself in a river like my mother did, long ago." Sumnyot sighed regrettably then. "Our lives upon Nirn are all far too short, Lydia. No one, even if they feign carelessness of it, should assume they have the gift of time to think themselves _more_ of a man or mer than another. It is not a good thing to harbour in one's heart..."

Lydia blinked silently for a moment, and she curled Sumnyot closer. Then she smiled a little. "I think much of the same things myself, lady Sumnyot," she said. "Such things as what we now speak of are what I have waited very long for in my life. Truly, I feel more a Housecarl than ever I did before!"

Sumnyot laughed softly at her bed-partner. "I tell you, woman," she grumbled dully. "You are still no one's Housecarl in this old tent of mine."

Lydia sighed. "Even so..." she breathed grinningly, impishly.

"Quiet yourself," Sumnyot harassed contentedly, and she bumped against Lydia behind her. "Let us sleep together again, until the sun climbs just a little higher in the sky."

Lydia, now feeling roused and a little elated, found herself grimacing behind her quieting patroness. "How shall I prove my worth to you, lying here wasting away the good daylight, lady?" she complained.

"Shush..." Sumnyot scolded quietly with a small, sleepy smile. "Be still, woman, and close your eyes. There are still many hours left in this day to do many things."

* * *

><p><strong>::AN:: **I'm just doing this willy-nilly! This is my very first time uploading, and updating, something so frivolously. Just because I can. So don't take this fic too seriously, cuz everything about it is 'hot off the press'. Ha, ha. :) It's kinda fun, but weird and scary doing this. Anyways! If you're reading this _right_ now: thanks so, so, so much for even taking the time! Ha, ha. I still don't know what I'm going to do with this thing later on in the month, so if you're still diggin' it, maybe you like pointless and light reading like I do, then go ahead and keep following. But...I'm just saying, don't expect much from this! I'm kind of just poking at passing ideas with long, pointy sticks right now, you know the deal... Mwa-ha-ha! So, I heart you readers very, very much and I appreciate your lovely eyes scanning these letters n' things! Ton's of this: XoX. (WrEn!)** ::A/N::**


	3. I Shall Teach You

**S**umnyot, clothed now in a sleeveless jerkin, and a beaded foresworn skirt, kneeled in the grass, and sidled in before her squat corner-table. She placed two clay drinking-bowls and a pitcher of water down upon the worn tabletop. "Here, sate your thirst, Lydia," Sumnyot murmured as she poured her guest an ample drink of freshly drawn, rain-cooled river water.

Lydia, still clothed in her spun wine-coloured jerkin and pantaloons, eagerly did as she was posed, and reaching out for her bowl over the table, she thirstily emptied it in a scant, deep gulp. Sumnyot smiled curiously and filled her would-be Housecarl's bowl to its brim once more. "Drink as you please," Sumnyot offered contentedly. "Fill your bowl yourself, as you like."

Lydia took up her bowl again, but paused before supping at the sweetly cold water within. "Lady," she wondered idly, "Sumnyot, how shall I prove my worth to you this day?" she asked. Then she shrugged her shoulders as she reclined easily at her Thane's diminutive, little dining table. "You have but to ask of me anything, and I myself shall do it, just as you command."

Sumnyot silently rolled her dark eyes as she sipped at her first taste of the water. The half-breed woman gradually tipped back her braid-haired head, and drained her bowl, then she sighed and poured herself out another portion of the restorative water. "Morning sleep still clings foggy to my body and mind, Lydia," Sumnyot urged as she placed the pitcher back onto the table. "Indulge me, and do not speak to me yet, of this petty Housecarl-business so early into the morn." Lydia, looking just a little stung, simply frowned, and she drank down her water with a slightly pinched, but mostly pensive-looking pretty face.

"Are you hungry, Whiterun-woman?" Sumnyot asked.

Lydia licked at her full, pink lips. "Only a little, lady Sumnyot." She answered.

Sumnyot smiled oddly then. "Favour me then, Lydia," the small, smiling woman said. "In the corner of my tent, just over there behind you, you will find a few spears. Go and bring me one, and also take another for yourself."

Lydia, wondering what spears had to do with eating so early in the morning, gaped at the slightly grinning half-breed woman for a moment. Then she stood, and making her way to the corner of the tent Sumnyot had mentioned, she found a neatly tied bundle of wooden, iron, and some bone-tipped spears. Lydia frowned at the weapons as she untied the leather thong knotted fast round them.

"Which of these do you prefer for yourself, lady Sumnyot?" Lydia asked absently.

After a small moment of silence, Lydia looked over her shoulder, and watched as her Thane shrugged her shoulders uncaringly, enigmatically. "Any shall do…" she murmured as her drinking-bowl was raised to her lips.

At last releasing the tie about the bundle of spears, Lydia laid them all down upon the grassy ground and she quickly looked them over. She picked out two spears and set them aside, then she gathered up the rest of the weapons and tied them securely back together. After placing the bundle of spears back from where they had come, Lydia stood up with the two spears she'd picked out for herself and her Thane.

"Are these the weapons you have chosen for us?" Sumnyot asked quietly, gesturing with her water-filled clay bowl.

Lydia nodded. "Yes…" she mumbled a little questioningly, eyeing the slender, dark, half-breed woman lounging at the nearby table.

Sumnyot laid down her bowl disinterestedly. And she stood and walked over to her guest. "Well and well…" she hummed, suddenly appraisingly looking at the tall spears and her would-be Housecarl in turns. "And so it is, that I find myself _liking_ what you have chosen, woman," Sumnyot called elatedly, then she grasped at a spear in Lydia's hand and she took it for herself.

Lydia, her dark brows furrowing perplexedly, clasped at her own spear with both of her hands, and she leaned her long weight easily into it. "What may I ask," Lydia wondered, "eases you so, concerning my simple choices?"

Sumnyot smirked. "Early, this very morn," she mumbled in reply while carefully inspecting her spear's deadly tip, "we spoke together of equality among warriors and men."

"Yes," Lydia insisted quietly, interestedly.

"Well, it pleases me greatly, to find that you would choose to give me the same manner of weapon, as you would have taken for yourself." Sumnyot, as she had been gently fingering at her sharp, iron spear-tip, the very same as Lydia's, flicked dextrously at the spear-blade with her fingertips and made it hum tunefully. "It may _seem_ a small thing," Sumnyot whispered lightly. "But to me, it certainly is not…"

Sumnyot smiled warmly then, at her would-be Housecarl. And Lydia herself could not help but smile openly back, while being gaped at so gladly by her odd Thane. Lydia, at the moment, clearly felt as though she had at long last proven something of herself to the half-breed woman.

"Come," Sumnyot commanded after a small moment of meeting eyes. She turned on her barefooted heels then, and made to leave her expansive tent-dwelling. "Let us go out and stretch our legs a little, Lydia."

Lydia, gradually following, stepped through the hide and fur tent flaps of Sumnyot's dwelling, and she walked on alongside the smaller woman. "Tell me, please," Lydia speculated, "What are we to be doing with these spears, lady Sumnyot?"

Sumnyot laughed a little as she walked. The fresh, gentle morning winds disarranged the many black braids of her hair, and Sumnyot turned to smile cannily up at her tall, pretty Nord Housecarl. "Why," she said, "We shall go fishing with them."

Lydia allowed herself to laugh incredulously then. "_Spear_-fishing, lady?" she asked sceptically.

Sumnyot suddenly knitted her dark brows together thoughtfully. "Indeed so," she murmured. "I own no poles to fish with, nor do I wish to make them, nor do I wish to dig for grubs in the dirt to put on a pole's hook." Sumnyot grinned slightly to herself. "I am hungry _now_, and we shall catch fishes to break our fast all the quicker, if we do so together."

Lydia shook her head though. Her long wild hair waved in the hands of the wind, and she squinted her green eyes against it. "Please, do not be so sure," she mumbled smilingly. "I am certainly no fisherwoman, and this shall be my first attempt to do it with a spear!"

Sumnyot nodded tersely. "Do not worry," she said easily. "I myself shall teach you."


	4. And Who Are You

*****_**S**__umnyot _had done little more, than stand about, hip-deep, in the water. Other than this, she had Lydia do the fishing all herself. Sumnyot would pretend that she didn't see fishes swimming about her legs, and while feigning a rapt observance over the swirling, black river's surface, she was truly watching Lydia from the corner of her blackish eyes...

Lydia was a natural warrior and hunter. She took to the spear-fishing, like a bee to making honey. Sumnyot had made sure though, to take Lydia to the river-shallows where patience was the key, to the river-shallows that were not overly abundant with fish, to the places that required silence and intuitive discernment from their hunter's. Sumnyot had keenly wanted to see Lydia perform in such tasks and experience them while spear-fishing. And oh, how Lydia had done just that, unknowingly under Sumnyot's scrutiny, and to her sequestered delight!

Sumnyot had asked Lydia, to first try and toss her spear into the soft grasses of the riverbank. After that, the Bosmeri-Imperial woman, found that she only needed to teach Lydia how to properly _let go_ of the spear in her hand, and this, only just the once. Sumnyot had smiled secretly to herself, while furtively watching Lydia. And she began to note, approvingly, that the Nord woman only ever chose to throw her spear _wisely_ into the river. Lydia did not become frustrated, or impatient, she did not grow angry about things; she simply hunted the waters with gravity and precision, just as she would have hunted the home-plains of Whiterun for deer, or other creatures. And Sumnyot exulted in her heart to find these things, dwelling easy and true within Lydia's spirit.

One moment, upon looking at the tall, stately Nord woman, soaked through as she was with the river waters, her dark raven-hair wetted and pale-skinned muscular body poised to strike out, Sumnyot, fascinated, had spoken to Lydia. "_And who are you then, river-huntress?_" she had called, upon seeing a side to her Housecarl, that she had not truly seen before. "_I believe I forgot, or lost, my Whiterun guest on the way here to this place!_" And Sumnyot had then pretended to look over her shoulders for another Lydia.

And Lydia herself had smiled at Sumnyot's odd ways, at her gently perceptive words. But Lydia said little in return as she was, Sumnyot could tell, in the throes of the hunter's trance. "_Quiet, please, lady Sumnyot,_" she had chided whisperingly, smoky green eyes darting. "_You shall scare all the fishes away…_"

Sumnyot, laughing a little, had been very pleased at heart then, indeed. And she smiled with a renewed strangeness for her Housecarl; a knowing strangeness, which showed that Sumnyot had seen more of Lydia herself just fishing, than she had any time before. Lydia, Sumnyot reflected, was not simply a pining Housecarl from Whiterun, who sought to defend her title and her life's honour by recapturing her Thane. She was not simply a loyal protector, who upon being asked or not, would follow someone enduringly, stubbornly and persistently, from even this land to that land. She was not simply an educated, well-trained towns-lady from Whiterun, who dwelt her life full-bellied and comfortable, within great stone keeps. _No_, Sumnyot had thought to herself. _She is more than all this - she is only a woman._ And simply, this was what Sumnyot had seen, and what she silently chose to take, from their experience spear-fishing together. Sumnyot wanted, and had taken, only the humble glimpse, the fleeting gift, of somehow understanding Lydia, only as she was, and nothing more.

After a time, Sumnyot had waded her way back to the pebbly shores along the riverbank. Lydia had caught not only one fish, but three! And Lydia had _still_ wanted to frolic a little more in the rain-swollen, darkly running waters of the river. But Sumnyot had grown much-pensive, very content and of course, grossly hungry, over the time fishing. The half-breed woman wanted nothing more than to return to her tent, where she could ease into her thoughts, as well as cook the fishes Lydia caught.

"_Come, Lydia!_" Sumnyot had called, to her very deft river-hunting guest. "_We have plundered this river enough, and I am growing starved now unto death!_"

Lydia had smiled and nodded, then she came out of the waters. And Sumnyot beheld the pretty Nord in all her wetted, triumphantly heart-satisfied glory, and the morning sun even, seemed to shine upon Lydia so golden, and all the brighter for her clear happiness. "_Here I have never fished with a spear, my entire life,_" Lydia had uttered breathily, gladly, while dripping-wet upon the river's rocky edge. "_And I find it such a pleasant thing. Not unlike deer, or elk hunting, at all!_"

Sumnyot had grinned a small, but intently warm, grin at Lydia then. After having gathered the large fishes together, binding them through their gills with a bit of green twig, Sumnyot spoke. "_Yes,_" Sumnyot had replied. _"Hircine himself could not hope to see a better fisher out than you this morn! And here! You seemed to have handled a spear like any fine-handed, ashborn fisherman from Morrowind! I am inclined to think you fibbed to me earlier, in saying you have never spear-fished before..._"

Lydia had laughed and smiled along with her patroness Sumnyot then. And they silently headed on, ambling up the sloping grassy riverbank, barefoot and walking with one another in the sunlight. As the half-breed woman delightedly lifted the hefty, white-bellied fishes on high to look appraisingly upon them once more, she spoke out again. "_A fine trio of fat wriggler's indeed, my river-huntress friend…_" she had said.*****


	5. Do Not Say

**L**ydia thrusted, overreaching slightly, with a raggedly spent breath. Sumnyot easily leaned aside from the glancing blow, letting the Nord-woman's pole slide in alongside her neck and shoulder. Lightning quick, Sumnyot captured the intruding staff fast with her own. Jerking her left fist downwards, which in turn brought about her right fist in a tilting arc, Sumnyot pressed her pole-shaft hard against Lydia's throat and began to push. Quickly using the tall Housecarl's own weight, as well as the suddenness of unexpected alarm, Sumnyot swiftly slipped her leg in behind Lydia's, and spun her down to the grassy ground.

The very moment Lydia's back fell gracelessly against the ground with a hard thud, Sumnyot leaned herself back, and she skated her blunted staff-end onto Lydia's soft, exposed throat. Lydia, splendidly gleaming with sweat and a reddening face, immediately stilled beneath her patroness' mock-weapon. Sumnyot, panting quietly, smiled wolfishly down at her Housecarl.

"And so," Sumnyot rasped, "we have both 'killed' each other once this day." Sumnyot laughed airily, then she elegantly twirled her pole away from Lydia's neck.

Lydia, beaten, laid her head down against the grass with a soft smile. Her chest heaved from her exertion, but she simply blinked absently, at the wispy white clouds passing by in the bright, crisp blue sky overhead. As Sumnyot unexpectedly fell to her knees beside Lydia, then laid down completely in the coarse grass alongside her, the Housecarl's smile only grew and she shook her soft, dark-locked head wonderingly.

"Oh," Lydia sighed contentedly. "Talos, but that was glorious…"

Sumnyot, laughing knowingly, looked over at her Housecarl only to find her grinning, with a Nord's telltale love for the rush, and the fleeting heat, of battle. Sumnyot's own heart warmed instantly upon seeing this for herself, so very visibly, on Lydia. The half-breed woman had eagerly wanted to spar with Lydia, upon first seeing her frisk about the river water's with a spear so wonderfully, refreshingly, skilful. And Sumnyot had certainly not been disappointed by Lydia's show of raw, strong talent. She'd proven her skill very easily during their two scant matches against each other.

Lydia turned her sharply pretty face then, and met her patroness' candidly wandering black eyes. "At some moments," Lydia murmured, "I confess, I could scarcely see you whirling about me." Lydia offered an appreciative and warm smile, then.

And Sumnyot grinned lightly in return. Then she looked away and carefully wiped the damp from off her brow with her bared arm. "And you," Sumnyot uttered reflectively. "You are _far_ too strong for my liking." Sumnyot laughed out delightedly then, and she slipped a hand down to her lean side. "Ah," she huffed blissfully, proudly pondering her freshest of battle-wounds. "My chest still burns from dueling you, Lydia. And my ribs!" she cried happily with a strange smile. "They ache, even now!"

Lydia watched as Sumnyot parted her lips, and began to laugh tiredly, but elatedly. Lydia, as a warrior herself and inexplicably understanding, could not help but join in her patroness' dark merriment. Lazing wearily alongside one another, both winded upon the wiry green grasses, the odd pair simply chuckled in turns together for a while. Though it was a rather long while, in which they knew and respected each other's prowess. As well, they shared together their utterly satisfied feeling's, taken simply, just from a pretended battle, with parody-weapons pitted against one another.

After a gradually easing-in silence, Lydia sighed loosely and looked over upon Sumnyot's golden, war-painted, and upturned face. "Lady Sumnyot," she mouthed with a softly forthright look. "You would make such a fine Dovahkiin…" she mumbled in a lowered voice.

Sumnyot though, pursed her lips peevishly at Lydia's words. She bent her bare arm, and lifted up a pointed finger. "I do thank you, Lydia," Sumnyot murmured casually, starting to wag her finger about. "But I shall stop you _right_ there." Sumnyot, with a cocked arched brow, lowered her hand down to the grass. Then she turned, and gaped at her, still smiling, Housecarl. "You must leave such talk as that, to tiresome men. Mages, Jarls and Greybeards! Not us, not we two."

Lydia, inwardly respecting the veiled warning, looked away from her patroness, with the ghost of a grin still gracing her gaunt and shadowy features. She absently licked at the sweat from the corner of her lips. And she decidedly remained quieted.

"Though," Sumnyot digressed frivolously, from close beside Lydia. "I feel I must say, that I can rightly think the very same thing of you yourself." Sumnyot smiled, slightly ponderingly, then. "Perhaps, I shall trade my artlessly foreordained fate with yours?" she jested. "Though that would be very unkind of me, would it not be?" Sumnyot laughed at herself shallowly.

Lydia, though, tensed pensively at the half-breed woman's words. Her trim black brows knitted upon her pale, exercise-glowing face, before she boldly spoke. "I would take this destiny from you, if I could, lady Sumnyot," she uttered genuinely.

Sumnyot flicked her eyes, slitted and wary, onto the face of her Housecarl. "You would?" she asked oddly. "_Why_ would you do such a thing?" she hawked chidingly. "No. You should not say such things, not so hastily, my friend..."

Sumnyot though, then kept watching curiously, as Lydia bit at her soft, full lips for a quiet moment. "I tell you true, that I _would_," Lydia said resoloutely after, and she nodded her head tersely. "Not simply because I see how it pains you, as an individual, to be held on high by men and mer, but because it shall be a true salvation to _all_ men of Skyrim and even Nirn itself." Lydia frowning deeply, gazed nakedly at her Thane, with such heartfelt eyes and a heavy expression, which Sumnyot had not yet seen from the Housecarl before. "Lady Sumnyot," Lydia whispered earnestly. "It had been whispered about in Whiterun Hold, before I left to come find you, that _another_ dragon was seen in the night. Flying over the lands of The Pale…"

Sumnyot, staring back in kind and listening respectfully, sincerely held Lydia's fervent, green eyes with her own. "Shall you truly choose to not help us all?" Lydia asked, openly disbelievingly. "It has been nearly a full month, since the Greybeard's first summoned you. And I believe it is sheer luck, sent from the Daedra themselves, that no other settlement has been attacked yet, as Whiterun was."

Sumnyot then turned away shortly, tiny braids flicking about her shoulders, as she did. And yet, Lydia bravely, even then, chose to continue on. As she knew that she, somehow, held her Thane's listening ear. "Lady Sumnyot," she uttered softly, carefully. "I cannot help but think of what a massacre, and a ruin it would be, if a second dragon should attack Dawnstar. Without your given aid as the land's _only_ Dragonborn... it shall be like another Helgen."

Sumnyot, glowering her eyes up hotly, turned then to look back upon Lydia. The half-breed woman's glimmering black eyes roved searchingly over Lydia's nakedly disturbed, telling face for a long, and thickly silent, moment. "Ah!" Sumnyot hissed afterwards, with her heart beating ominously hard beneath her breast. "Please, freely allow me just this _one_ thing this day, Lydia. Do not say another word more of this to me," she requested whisperingly. "Your eyes have already said far too much to me, only now."

Lydia mouth-gaping a little, shook her head unknowingly. "I...am sorry, lady Sumnyot," she muttered bemusedly.

Sumnyot though, simply regarded her Housecarl, with uncharacteristically heavy-lidded, pained eyes. "Do not be sorry," she urged quietly. "What you have said to me is both astute, and good, Lydia. But I ask that you try to understand me, when I say that I only wish to enjoy your company, if only it is just for a very little while." Sumnyot stared then into Lydia's darting green eyes, looking hopeful and yet sternly coolled for a reply.

Lydia, though dismayed and ultimately unanswered, could only seem to instantly nod her head at her Thane. She supposed to herself, that she understood Sumnyot a little, and could see, that the half-breed woman simply wanted to feel, and was searching desperately even still, for a kind of peace in her life. Lydia frowned thoughtfully before speaking. "I do understand your request, lady Sumnyot," she finally answered. "And I shall say no more. Even as you have asked me, so shall I do it."

Sumnyot intently looked her disheartened Thane over for a moment. Then she slowly sat up. "I – I thank you, Lydia," she mumbled over her shoulder. Then she spoke out again, though in a somehwat forced, more directing tone. "Come," she insisted frailly. "Let us return to my tent now, where we can rest ourselves. I shall make us each a bowl of hot tea to sup on." Sumnyot turned her black, braided head round then, and she spritely touched her hand upon Lydia's leg. "We can talk this day's sunlight away together," she murmured. "Until, by Y'ffre, we can begin to sup upon drinks far stronger than my flowery mountain-teas!"

Lydia smiled weakly up at Sumnyot, and at her somewhat strained jibe. Feeling genuinely sympathetic of her Thane's strange plight, of her burdened fate, and helplessly thinking idly to herself, Lydia decidedly slid her own hand down onto Sumnyot's. "You shall not send me away then, this day?" Lydia asked wonderingly. And she gently felt at Sumnyot's small, fine-boned hand upon her leg.

Sumnyot leisurely shook her head from side-to-side. She stared absently ahead of herself, with slightly dismal-looking eyes. "No, Lydia," she breathed slowly in reply. "I cannot let you, nor your good horse, travel about the roads home in the darkness. Certainly not while you are both under my care." Sumnyot smiled then, and she gazed down at Lydia, whose hand laid tenderly upon her own. "You shall stay with me, only once more tonight. And in the morning, I shall at last, send you both on your way from me…"

* * *

><p><strong>::AN:: **To all the silent reader's, the ones who have favourited, the alerting ones, and the 'ElvenAngel .Neeya. The Great': Thank you all so, so stinking much for reading! I can't say how much I simply, wonderingly, appreciate it, straight from my heart! For me, I'm still just merrily having fun with this. There's something weirdly blissful about it. :) Again though, if you're reading this _right_ now… thank you so very much! Just for reading, just for giving it a try. You won't hear from me for a long while now, cuz I just had to stop by and thank everyone. I hope you have/had an awesome night, or an awesome day, and I hope this lil' silly story of mine makes you feel, at least, happy somehow. 'Ignorance is bliss', right? But _I_ say, SO IS honest simplicity! Ha, ha, ha. Okay, enough of that! Lots and lots of this again: XoX! Genuinely in my mind, from me to all of you! (WrEn!) **::A/N::**


	6. Dovahkiin

**L**ydia flinched in her sleep as the familiar call rent the silence of night. Piercing through The Reach, like a crack of very close lightning.

"_**DO – VAH – KIIN - !**_"

Lydia, her heart pounding from the eerie, thunderous shout, could swear she almost felt the dolefully powerful voices rumble through her own body. Every seventh night, she recalled groggily, the Greybeards reproachfully summoned the lost, and reclusive Dragonborn. Many people of Skyrim, Lydia mulled, would lie awake this moment with her, wondering why the Dragonborn would not meet the bid of the great men waiting on The Throat of the World. Lydia wondered to herself, just how much longer the Greybeards would remain so patient. She wondered, how many times more they would beckon for Sumnyot, before finding her and claiming her by force. Lydia glanced over her shoulder, thinking that the more concerned and zealous people of Skyrim, might soon form a mob to find Sumnyot themselves…

And then Lydia realised that she lied alone on the wide fur-covered bed pallet. Lydia was just straining herself up, as a pair of hands batted the hide tent flaps aside, and then Sumnyot stormed into the tent-dwelling.

"It is the twenty-eighth day now…" Sumnyot whispered to herself. She glanced down at Lydia who was blearily staring at her. "If I could shout back at those men in their own language," Sumnyot menaced, "I would." Sumnyot then paced, in her underclothes, into the tent. The nasty, long black bruise from Lydia's staff-strike earlier this morning, showed nakedly upon Sumnyot's ribs, and Lydia's belly twinged with needless shame, even now.

But Lydia remained silent and simply watched her agitated Thane stride over to her small dining table. Sumnyot's eyes burned, her face was red-cheeked and her small, muscular arms corded as she balled her hands into fists. Lydia mused idly to herself, and decided that she felt odd, seeing her generally mellowed, careless patroness so very wound up. Lydia wondered if Sumnyot's anger was from embarrassment, or resentment. Or perhaps both…

Sumnyot bent at the squat dining table, and was pouring herself a drinking-bowl of Honningbrew mead. The half-breed woman tersely set down the large flagon of mead, then took up the filled bowl. Straightening, Sumnyot tipped the brim of her overflowing bowl hungrily against her questing mouth. And Lydia watched with a cocked eyebrow, as Sumnyot did this again, two more times.

After a moment, Sumnyot laid her drinking-bowl down on the tabletop, and wiped her mead-wetted mouth with her bared arm. "I wish, to Y'ffre, that I had never set my foot in these lands," Sumnyot mumbled. And she stared idly at nothing, while she stood, naked and disturbed, upon the grass within her fire-lit tent.

Lydia stared quietly. She thought of saying something to the half-breed woman, but decided against speaking, since the only thing floating within her mind would only seem flippantly harsh, if spoken aloud. Though Lydia wished, with her Nord's heart, that Sumnyot would just _go_ and meet the Greybeards!

But Lydia's mind stilled as Sumnyot flicked her black eyes upon her. "Lay yourself down," Sumnyot offered aimlessly. "Sleep while there is still night to burn. There will be much for us to do in the morning, before you leave."

Lydia frowned, with tired green eyes. "What shall _you_ do?" she croaked questioningly.

Sumnyot took a deep breath into her small chest. Then she shook her braided-head and huffed out a laugh. "I shall do what I always do on these accursed seventh-nights," Sumnyot replied. "I shall tend my fire…and brood," she said, mocking herself. "Like a freshly spanked babe, who has been caught with a sweet roll in her hand before supper."

Lydia watched, smiling helplessly at her Thane's analogy, while Sumnyot paced over to her small fire on the ground. As the Bosmeri-Imperial woman sat down in the grass, pulling her knees up to her chest and laying her chin on them, Lydia herself let out a burdened sigh. She would surely not be able to sleep, she thought, not while her Thane was so obviously tensed.

Lydia, still sleep-unsteadied, wearily stood from the bed and decidedly joined her Thane by the fire. As she knelt down in the grass by Sumnyot, Lydia placed a hand on her patroness' bare shoulder. Sumnyot glanced at Lydia from the corner her black eyes. And Lydia then squeezed reassuringly at patroness' shoulder.

"Why do you tarry like this, my lady Sumnyot?" Lydia daringly asked, despite her warning heart. "Why do you strain your soul, spiting your destiny?" Lydia gazed then, softly and caringly at her Thane.

But Sumnyot's dark brows only knitted upon her golden-skinned forehead. "I have already asked this day," Sumnyot warned, "that you not probe me about these matters. Please," she uttered deeply. "Do not make me repeat myself again."

Lydia sighed resignedly, and removed her hand from Sumnyot's small shoulder. The Housecarl gaped absently then, at the bright flames roiling in the little fire-pit. "May I ask you one thing more, lady Sumnyot?" Lydia murmured.

Sumnyot glared fixedly at her Housecarl. "Is it anything about what I have just repulsed to you?" she spat bluntly.

Lydia shook her soft-haired head. "No…" she answered, with a slight frown.

"Then speak," Sumnyot said with a nod, and then turning, she laid her chin back onto her bent knees.

"Have I proven anything of my usefulness to you?" Lydia inquired quietly. And she turned her dark head to look at Sumnyot directly.

The half-breed woman simply blinked her eyes for a long moment, and she stared at the dancing, flicking firelight before her. "You have proven much of yourself to me, Lydia," Sumnyot replied. "So, I shall honour our agreement, and think deeply upon having a Housecarl at my side."

Lydia serenely smiled at her quieted and brooding patroness. This, for such a long moment, that Sumnyot at last had to turn and look up at Lydia herself. Sumnyot laughed chidingly at her smiling Nordic guest then, and shook her head.

"Feather-headed woman," she murmured to Lydia. And Sumnyot stretched out her hand, and ran it gently down Lydia's soft, sombrely beautiful face. "Go now," Sumnyot requested, sounding quietly pensive. "You must let yourself sleep, my friend. While there is still night to burn away."

Lydia blinked softly for a moment against her Thane's cool hand. Then she stood up from the half-breed woman's side, but before she made to amble away, Sumnyot spoke.

"I am glad you are here this night," Sumnyot grumbled. "I find your presence somehow soothing. Even during such an unpleasant time as this. And _even_," she added dryly, "despite your incessant feather-headedness…"

Lydia smiled crookedly down at her Thane, and her words, for a moment. But then she turned away, and tiredly made her way to the tent's darkened bed-corner. Lydia wondered, hopefully, if Sumnyot would think on what she so boldly said before, about simply just going to meet the Greybeards. Then, as she tumbled herself down onto the warm furs covering the big bed, Lydia shortly prayed to Talos, that he help the silly, odd woman see reason, and soon…


	7. Now You May Go

*****_**S**__umnyot_ had extricated herself from her guest's arms, very early in the morning. She had not slept much anyways, and the few hours she had, had been full of tiresome waking-dreams. So, Sumnyot had easily roused herself with no ill will. After putting on her same meagre bits of clothing, foresworn skirt and loose jerkin, Sumnyot took a bone-tipped spear from her weapon-bundle, an old net from outside her tent, and then she had gone down to the river. Stalking barefoot in the morning-dimness, upon wetted rocks, and hiding within the hanging river-mists, Sumnyot speared a smallish, healthy-looking mudcrab.

Indeed, Sumnyot mulled as she had carried her kill home, she did want Lydia to have a good and hearty meal, before having to head out upon the wearisome roads. Also, Sumnyot had thought awkwardly as well, she felt as though a nice breakfast would somehow make up for her own strangeness, her taciturn ways and sometimes very guileless tongue. Yes, Sumnyot had thought to herself as she climbed the grassy riverbanks with her wet mudcrab stuck inside the old net, she very much wanted Lydia to leave her side soothed, and content. But she had not known if such a thing was truly possible.

Sumnyot had quietly returned to her dwelling, intent on her task anyway. Leaving the mudcrab, and its sweet fishy reek, outside, she'd put her spear away, then went outside to stoke up a big fire in the pit out there, which she could fit a large pot of water on. And Sumnyot had boiled up her crab. She boiled too though, freshly picked green leeks and she steamed mushrooms, all from her secretive garden hidden off in the wilderness. And, she had also taken it upon herself to roast up a great many cloves of garlic, and then she had thought too, that she would even offer up a bowl of her preciously stashed salt for their meal. Sumnyot had decided too, that she would even make tea to drink, by Y'ffre! A fine and restorative tea, made from the plentiful blue mountain flowers, and the leaves of Elves Ear, which hung dried and simply waiting to be used up, from her tent-roof.

Sumnyot did all these things easily and rather quickly, and when everything was cooked and ready to be eaten, Sumnyot had gone and woke Lydia up with a nudging toe. Then, they had eaten and drunk together outside on the dewy grass. Because there had just been too much food, and none of it would fit together upon the small table inside Sumnyot's tent. So, Lydia and Sumnyot filled their bellies happily out of doors, talking and gamboling together, becoming fully energised by the food and drink, while able to observe the beautiful dawn coming up in the east, all that while.

And all so soon it seemed, they had broken their fasts as much as was thinkable. Then, Lydia had left with her horse, to go and water him down at the river. And Sumnyot, who decided to not wash the dishes, simply threw the emptied, scoured things into the old pot on the fire. Though she, of course, had dumped the crab-water away from her tent, and ladled fresh water into the pot before that.

Then Lydia had finally returned. She rubbed down her horse with picked field straws, then quickly blanketed, saddled and packed him. And Sumnyot had remained outside, ponderously watching the ever brightening dawn, while Lydia went and put on her steel bits of armour, her fire-dried black cloak, her belted longsword and shield.

Then, Sumnyot herself, had gone back into her tent to grab up her own, night-blue cloak. She'd slung her shroud over shoulders and left her tent, only to find Lydia already waiting, seated upon her dark horse. While Sumnyot had put her hood over her braided-head, and began to lead the way on to the road, the pensive half-breed woman surprised herself, as she thought that she was somehow already starting to miss her Housecarl's company.*****

**X**

**S**umnyot stood, hooded and barefoot on the fogged-over, loosely cobbled road. Sumnyot gaped up at Lydia, who sat upon her black horse, with a small smile. After a silent, understanding moment of meeting eyes, Sumnyot decidedly stepped closer to Lydia's big horse. Then the half-breed woman slowly reached up her bare arm.

Lydia, bending down a little, grasped firmly at her patroness' proffered arm. And Lydia held Sumnyot's small wrist tightly within her gauntleted hand, while the half-breed woman on the road, too did the same to Lydia. "You promise you shall remember our deal and its _intents_, lady Sumnyot?" Lydia asked quietly with searching, pretty green eyes.

Sumnyot smiled widely then at Lydia, while they heartfully embraced each other, hand-to-wrist, as if they were old battle-friends and not simply just happenstance acquaintances. "As I have said," Sumnyot murmured, grinning. "I am a woman of my words. I shall remember, Lydia. And do not fret about this…"

Lydia though, frowned down at Sumnyot and squeezed harder at her slender bare arm. "I…am none so sure," she mumbled, feigning a mock-look of dark suspicion. "I recall you vowing to 'cut my throat' only the other morning. Yet here I am, still with my head!"

Sumnyot laughed delightedly at Lydia's unexpectedly playful words. "Ah," she huffed after a moment. "But, does not every woman have to eat her words sometimes?" she retorted grinningly.

Lydia smiled widely, flashing her straight pearly teeth at Sumnyot, in a very open grin that was somewhat unusual for the Nord woman. "I jest," Lydia confessed needlessly. "Your word is good to me, lady Sumnyot."

Sumnyot nodded up at her Housecarl. "Before you go," she inquired. "You must also promise _me_ some things." Sumnyot then studied her leaned-down Housecarl with an openly yearning look. "You must not come back to me, lest I myself send for you. And you, please, must tell no one where it is that I live…"

Lydia's raven-brows knitted upon her pale, fine-looking face. "You needn't have asked," Lydia replied. And she gaped feelingly, at her patroness' large and elfin, captivating blackish eyes.

Sumnyot nodded again then. "I do thank you, Lydia," Sumnyot replied, and she slightly shook her strong grip upon Lydia's steel-plated forearm.

"You know still..." Lydia whispered back, her green eyes darting over Sumnyot's upturned, feline face. "That you _must_ go to the Greybeards? You must help my motherland?" Lydia frowned pleadingly as she continued on. "You have spoken so fondly of equality to me, _Sumnyot_," Lydia said. "Surely you see that your own principle is at stake, while you spurn this role as the appointed Dragonborn?"

Sumnyot blinked for a moment at Lydia, then she sighed deeply. "Of course, I know this," she responded, with grave feeling in her voice. "But I have not the time, nor the want to explain away my heart to you. So please," Sumnyot urged, firmly grasping her Housecarl's arm. "Please, be still for now. And let us just be content to say our goodbye's to one another."

Lydia nodded her head quickly at that. "Yes..." she uttered quietly. "Yes. This, I do understand."

Sumnyot then, inexplicably grinned with a stern shaking of her hooded head. "And you stubborn, stubborn woman!" Sumnyot chided teasingly. "You choose _now_ of _all_ moments, to use my first name alone, simply by itself?" Sumnyot huffed out a laugh at Lydia. "You are indeed, an unkind woman. So you must redress, and say goodbye to me now using my name again, you!"

As Sumnyot falteringly, somewhat unwantedly, stepped away from Lydia and released her hold upon the Nord's hand, Lydia could only helplessly smile along with her bizarre patroness. "Well, goodbye then, _Sumnyot_!" Lydia called with a deep nod of her dark-haired, mist-wetted head. "I thank you very much for the spare rations you gave to me. And upon your call, I am yours, always."

Sumnyot couldn't help but laugh. She looked over her cloaked shoulders then, funnily. "And who are you talking to, Lydia?" she jibed as she glanced about. "Is some namby-pamby lord behind me now?"

Lydia laughed at her Thane and shook her head. "By Talos. Do not tease me, Sumnyot!" she retorted. "I mean what I have said, truly!"

Sumnyot grinned and knowingly nodded at Lydia. Then she lifted her hand in a bid of simple, disheartening farewell. "Thank you, my friend," Sumnyot said. "Travel safe, but travel _fierce_ too, and keep a wary hand on your sword-pommel!"

Lydia nodded slowly, with a disquieted face, at the half-breed woman's gesture, and at her final words. Then she seemed to sigh rather doggedly. And the odd pair gaped at one another then, like very silly heartsick youths. And warily, they both saw this in one another's nakedly staring eyes. Yet, they both in their secret heart-of hearts, understood wordlessly that neither one of them worried overmuch about such a foolish thing, though it was slightly inexplicable and mad and frivolous. Then, Lydia at last broke from Sumnyot's gaze, and she resolutely looked away from her. She clucked her tongue and urged her black horse forward.

Lydia and her horse only got a few, very dismal, clopping horse-steps away though. Then Sumnyot wildly decided to silently race, in her padding barefeet, down the road after them. As soon as Sumnyot was near enough to the big black horse, she lifted her leg up and used Lydia's own stirrup-secured boot as a foothold for herself. Then Sumnyot grasped lightly at Lydia's cloaked shoulder, and she hauled herself up to a standing position right beside the Nord woman, riding on her boot and holding herself steady by the horn of the saddle.

Lydia, with a startled look, instantly reined in her mount, and she gawked at Sumnyot who was so suddenly pressed close against her. But before Lydia could even _think_ to speak, Sumnyot reached out with her one free hand and slipped it behind Lydia's head, into her soft dark hair. The half-breed woman briskly urged Lydia forward, and she kissed her smilingly.

Sumnyot's lips moved and pressed at Lydia's full mouth, very gently and tenderly, but with a nakedly, telling, spryness. Lydia eventually began to respond with her own tentacious, firm hunger, and she curled her arm around Sumnyot's willowy hips, pressing her even a little closer to herself. And the two kissed at each other keenly, very tenderly, for a small moment upon the road, curiously while upon a black horse, and veiled within the gray Reach-mists with only the golden, brightening sunlight peeking at them.

Sumnyot thought, very distractedly though, that before Lydia should try to persuade her into the saddle, she had better go, lest she be positively swayed through Lydia's kisses. So, Sumnyot pulled away from Lydia then, their lips smacking wetly apart when she did, and the half-breed woman gave her Housecarl a last wry smile, before jumping away.

"_Now_ you may go. Goodbye!" Sumnyot cried with a wide smile. Then she contentedly turned and began stalking her way back up the stony, dew-wetted road in her barefeet.

Lydia, breathing hard and her lips still seething with a lovely pinkish hue, twisted inside her saddle to look back at her reckless Thane.

Up the road though, Sumnyot herself, knowingly turned around then, and she waved her hand at Lydia in an absolute, true farewell. "Go, my friend!" she called. "Do not waste your daylight!"


	8. To Y'ffre & Kyne

**S**umnyot stood, companionless, upon the rocks near the river's edge. Cold, babbling water lapped gently over her feet, chilling her bodily and making her soft golden flesh prickle-up with chill. The half-breed woman silently and pensively glanced about the tranquil riverside, simply choosing to take in the morning, before wading on into the water's.

Daybreak-mists, hanging over the coursing black river were still thickly billowing, but they were beginning to steadily burn away at the edges, from the ever strengthening dawn's light. And rock warblers on the distant shoreline trilled at the morning sun's warmth politely. This day, Sumnyot thought frivolously to herself, would be clear-skied and mild, as it had been yesterday. It would be a fine, rainless day, she mused, to walk _far_ along the moors and highlands of The Reach…

But, Sumnyot only sighed deeply, then. Because such things, she told herself, were indeed idle and very old, well-known thoughts. Sumnyot knew, uneasily, in her heart that her own feet wanted to run away, and make her forget what she was beginning to think and feel again. Her fleshly body wanted to rush her away, deep into the beloved lands with eyes that drank in only nature, and a mind that forgot all thought. But, Sumnyot mused determinedly, no, today she would not do as her wild body and wild heart wanted. Today, she decided, she would _will_ herself to stay close to home. She would face up her own capering heart and think earnestly, honestly, upon the many things concerning her life in Skyrim…

Sumnyot blinked out of her reverie then, and she gazed absently upon the scuttling black waters of the river. O' _Y'ffre, and Kyne,_ Sumnyot begged in her mind. _Please, help me to make good on my decisions now. I find that I have many people awaiting my choices this day. Don __**not**__ let me run again!_ she asked. _Y'ffre, Kyne! __**Please**__, stay my feet to the skirts of my home, just this one day…_

As her heart thudded a little energetically, from her keening, unusual prayer, Sumnyot bent then, to pick up her small bathing things. _I shall bathe all these old feelings away, from off of me like dirt,_ Sumnyot contemplated with vigour. _Perhaps, I will come out of the river not as this sullied coward, but as my old self…_

And Sumnyot took a few resolute, barefooted steps. She waded on, deep into the river then, where she would oil her braids with an unction made of lavender and dragon's tongue. And as she began to stretch out her free hand to splash the frigid river-water over her naked body, Sumnyot allowed herself and her worried heart, the simple fortification of remembering a sweet, very true kiss that she had stolen this morning…

And Sumnyot smiled just a little. And she wondered openly, just how brave she could force herself to be…


	9. I Shall Not Do This Again

*****_**S**__umnyot_ begrudgingly delved. For a tiresome day, she worked herself over. Grimly and determinedly, in accordance with her own morning's prayer. Because, she decided, she really shouldn't slight the god and the Divine she had supplicated, so she too slaved herself right along with them. Both in body and mind, while spending a reserve of hope inside herself, that she swore could not be her own, but must only be of Y'ffre's and Kyne's; she strove for her own success, for regained honesty to herself, and for some semblance of the precious honour that she had, somehow, so blindly lost along her way…

For the long day, Sumnyot meditatively and gravely, made herself finally taste at the hidden, inexplicable sense of fear within her heart. And at last, though warily, she even fully began to acknowledge its existence inside of her. She realised then too, that she had never _truly_ known real fear before. Only in since coming to the lands of the Nordic peoples, had she felt such a primitive thing. While her free-spirit had instantly quailed under the sudden, testing girth of an irresistible and obligatory destiny...she had found herself lacking. And though it was all as utterly bitter as drugged wine to her soul, Sumnyot drew the fear up in herself, and she began to know it and loathe it for what it so nakedly was, simple cowardice and a fatal sense of, Daedra-Divine-slighted independence, at having been forced into something so very unwillingly.

Sumnyot decided that she simply needed to draw the fear and the haughtiness back out now, somehow. Like the drawing of poison from a chaurus sting. She would just have to suck it out herself, and then spit it away for good. Because her own respect, her usual freed joy, and her own values, _truly_ she grasped, _were_ being slowly and secretively eaten away while she feigned such foolish apathy of things. And she did not like thinking all of this, and it all seemed to flay her very heart open wide, but Sumnyot wanted more only to feel herself _whole_ again. If such a thing was even possible. So, she doggedly went on down her treacherous path…

And Sumnyot made herself many a-pot of mountain-tea that day, and she brooded for hours in her tent consuming bowls of plain tea. Sometimes, she did all this at her dining table, sometimes in her bed or by the small fire pit. She would mull, and she would champ upon her own chain of thinking, until things were unbound and flowing inside of her head. But, when she became so overwhelmed with overmuch thought that she finally grew useless and blank-minded, Sumnyot would go out of her tent and simply let herself lay in the warm sunlight for a while.

Then, she would get up afterwards and stubbornly return to her tent and her teapot, to think things all over again. And she did this, all the day, occasionally chiding herself once in a while, as she thought she was acting like a fool scholar-mage…pondering thoughts of old Nordic prophecies and integrity, as well as the fickle heart of mortals, indeed! Though, by the time a very long-awaited dusk came, there was _some_ fruition to be had from all of Sumnyot's blessed toil, during the long, arduous and somewhat disgracing, day. Sumnyot finally came to a few, very simple, but candid conclusions.

The first was in accepting, of course, her own faultiness and casting it aside. The second was that she truly, only wanted to help the men and mer of Skyrim during their plight. Though she, admittedly, still shied away from the afterthoughts following that particular deduction. The third thing concluded was that she had fully fulfilled her promise to her would-be Housecarl. Sumnyot decided she did not want a Housecarl at her side, and she _certainly_ did not think of herself as a Thane either, not while she lived in a tent in the woods under the dominion of another Jarl! But, Sumnyot decided, she would enjoy a companionship. One to help her and share the days that were to come.***  
><strong>

**X  
><strong>

**E**vening descended. Forming into a nicely cooled, very clear twilight. The sky was full of smoky purple colours, and dusty reds, scattered with handfuls of faint, very pale early evening stars. Sumnyot did not truly see all this though. She tiredly crumpled down to the grass outside of her tent, cradling in both of her warmed hands, a large steaming bowl of freshly prepared soup, made from all the morning's leftover bits of breakfast.

Sumnyot sighed deeply to herself as she crossed her legs, and stirred unconsciously at her mud-crab and leek soup. She stared blankly, with a very heavy-feeling head, over the small grassy plain spread before her and at the beautiful sunset. But its loveliness was quite lost on her unseeing eyes. While Sumnyot dipped her wooden spoon into her bowl, she thought vaguely, at how she only felt somehow oddly broken of spirit, and sapped of strength.

She raised up the spoon, absently, to her lips, supping at the hot, musky soup. Sumnyot wondered to herself then, if she would feel fouled like she did now, always. She wondered too, as she chewed upon bits of crabmeat, if an accepting and protective forgetfulness would be enough to ease her mind. Then Sumnyot only blinked, blearily at the fiery horizon before her. She turned suddenly and set down her bowl, with the spoon stuck inside of it, down onto the grassy ground.

Sumnyot decidedly laid herself back on the grass. "By Y'ffre," she murmured, softly closing her eyes. "Figuring one's self is tiring. I shall not do this ever again…" Sumnyot let out a big yawn, then. Forgetting her soup entirely, she began to willingly drowse into sleep, with only the red and purple, starry sky as her rooftop and the grass as her bed.


	10. I Have Left Some

**L**ydia sat atop her dark horse, stilled within the frigid and clear starry night, for just a passing moment to idle upon the traveling road. Ahead in the bedarkened distance laid Whiterun village, and all about that, the fine and expansive green flatlands under the domain of Whiterun Hold. The exalted stone city in the distance, well-walled and fortified, glowed with faint fire-lights and looked very welcoming to Lydia's travel wearied soul. But, she found herself inexplicably shifting in her saddle then, and her heart seemed to grow just a little cooler beneath her armoured breast, while she looked out upon her stately home.

Once within the safety of those walls again, Lydia thought sombrely, she would certainly have to play at her own Jarl with vague, contrived words. For her would-be Thane, Lydia mused, and her Thane's last earnest request, she would have to spin a few pointed lies. Lydia's heart had retreated and grown a little distant from this, because she realised that she would do such things willingly and easily for the half-breed woman. And that startled Lydia's upright mind somewhat, because she could not place where such blindly faithful feelings stemmed from within her heart. Nor could she seem to make herself _want_ to understand them, because of a kind of silent protectiveness dwelling deep inside of her…

Swishing his tail readily, Lydia's horse suddenly whickered softly in his deep, gentle horse-voice. And Lydia, while blinking tired, wandering eyes, came out of her thoughts then. The Housecarl smiled knowingly down at her keen-hearted horse, and she patted at his smooth, hard neck. "Yes," she murmured to him grinningly. "I am eager for _my_ own bed as well!"

Straightening herself in the saddle again, Lydia nudged her boots against her horse, and urged him onwards. Unhurriedly clopping their way down the cobbled road, Lydia and her horse finally made their way on home. And though Lydia was, of course, happy to be returning to Whiterun, she could feel that not all her thoughts were truly with her at the moment. For she found that she had left some, and perhaps she always would, with Sumnyot Paitr in The Reach.


	11. For Your Sake

_***L**__ydia's_, seemingly fruitless, return had incited a small and discreet movement within Dragonsreach. The Housecarl had, at the time, steeled both her mind and heart into calmness, while she began to play out her role on behalf of her would-be Thane. Lydia had done her best to cover up her reclusive Thane's whereabouts, in first telling the Jarl of Whiterun that the Dragonborn was lost and freely at large again, but was now most probably somewhere deep within the borderlands of Falkreath… which, Lydia knew, was far to the south of The Reach's highlands.

And upon telling her Jarl, wise but young Jarl Balgruuf, that Sumnyot Paitr was fleet of foot and of even quicker instinct, and that her trail had been hopelessly lost during a powerful storm which hit in the night, the Jarl did not even doubt his good Lydia. Though, he then had begun to take some action, much to Lydia's bewilderment and much to the irate pleasure of his brother, strong and steadfast Hrongar. He who was itching, always, to reclaim the 'blasphemous', 'outlander' Dragonborn by force, for the deliverance of Skyrim and her peoples.

First, Jarl Balgruuf had decreed that an emissary must be sent to High Hrothgar, for he much needed the counsel and the consent of the Greybeards in all matters concerning the Dragonborn. And, upon Hrongar fervently casting in his lot for such a very praiseworthy task, the Jarl immediately accepted him. And so, Hrongar was to be sent away to the Throat of the World, to act as his Jarl-brother's voice and agent there. Lydia was silently grateful that zealous Hrongar had wanted to go to the Greybeards, since she didn't particularly want him to have anything to do with Sumnyot. She was glad he would go away, where his hot-head could be cooled, no less, by the peevishly frigid weather found upon the way to High Hrothgar!

Then, Jarl Balgruuf determined that his own house be roused into a state of cautious vigilance. And the Jarl then looked to his staunch protector, the solemn Dunmer Irileth, for these matters. He proposed to her, that many more men be sent out to watch the well-frequented roads skirting his entire wide domain. And he implicitly directed that each man and woman must know, and understand, just _who_ it was that they would be searching for. So, he asked that if any guardsmen should find her, the Dragonborn was to be treated with only the utmost respect, and be brought straight to himself, unharmed and, hopefully, unruffled.

Then, Jarl Balgruuf turned his attention on to his clever steward. Missives, he declared, were to be written and sent, to only two other villages about the latest Dragonborn matters. Riverwood and Rorikstead, where the Jarl had good-standing, trustworthy friendships amongst the leaders there, only they were to be asked to keep on the lookout for the Dragonborn as well. And they were to be sworn into secrecy about it, of course. And that, the Jarl had uttered, would be the only overreaching steps he would take without the help of the Greybeards.

Jarl Balgruuf then lastly requested that Lydia help to direct the steward's scribes, as they began to draw up outlines depicting the Dragonborn's resemblance, which were to be handed out to each patrolling sentry upon the road, and also to be sent to both Riverwood and Rorikstead for their peoples usage. He also asked that Lydia take time to counsel Irileth as to the ways of the most elusive Dragonborn, as the Housecarl had chased her about, and knew her better in this way than any other within Dragonsreach.

Lydia of course, loosely and warily, but compellingly did all this, lest she be suspiciously found out. Though, she did make one request to her Jarl in return. That she be made useful, and be given her own small portion of land to watch over while Whiterun Hold was in search for the Dragonborn. And though she had been easily granted it, Lydia had still not been entirely satisfied, as she was given a road far to the northwest of Whiterun, very near to the cusp of the Hjaalmarch, which was not even close to the roads that came out of Markarth lands in the west… But Lydia had deeply thanked her Jarl anyway.

After being dismissed, with a somewhat heavy and anxious heart, Lydia tensely mulled over her would-be Thane's growing infamy, as Skyrim's Reluctant-Dragonborn. All these exploits to find her, she thought, would only most likely do to _undo_ any feelings of clemency within the half-breed woman's, very stubbornly, free-spirited heart. Sumnyot, Lydia mused, would certainly not like being hunted about like a spring rabbit for the cooking pot. And doing such to her would, perhaps, only push her away again and force her to disappear, for only Talos knew how long this time! And also, Lydia thought bleakly afterwards, if Sumnyot Paitr did not truly _want_ to be found, she simply _would not_ be found… And Lydia then felt that her Jarl and his men would only be chasing shadows and hearsay of her for a very long time, indeed.

But, such thoughts as those were unworthy in Lydia's mind, and not the ones that her heart was behind. For she still believed, down to her very Nordic bones, in Sumnyot's own feelings of honour and goodness. Lydia found herself asking once more then, that Talos _sway_ the half-breed woman's heart into some form of action! And she hoped fervently in Sumnyot's own intrinsic potential to _willingly_ accept her fate, before it was even too late for _that_ simple thing...*****

**X**

**D**usk was setting in across the lonesome green flatlands of Whiterun Hold, deeply and lustily red, cool and pleasantly windless. Lydia trudged in heavy, steel booted feet out across the short, coarse field-grasses. She led behind her, her easily sauntering black horse. And together, they were heading towards a small wood, which Lydia had spotted long ago while patrolling her prearranged area, which the Jarl had given unto her to watch over.

_There,_ Lydia thought to herself, as she tramped stolidly along towards the spinney. _I will make myself a fire, by Talos. And I do not care who shall see it either._ Lydia sighed at herself then. It was true though, she thought, she did not care if anyone saw her foolishly kindling up a fire for herself in the oncoming darkness. She herself was not looking for Sumnyot Paitr, not in the way the _other_ patrolling guards were looking for her, and she was staying out of doors unlike most of them too, so she most certainly deserved a fire. Lydia smiled to herself then, weakly.

"If I had a brazen _standard_ for Sumnyot to see," Lydia mumbled to herself. "Then I would most certainly fly it!" Lydia shook her dark, long-haired head. And she began to wonder what strange, silly banners she could fly. But what was stranger still to Lydia, was that her Thane would somehow _understand_ them…

Lydia huffed out a shallow laugh. _Sumnyot,_ Lydia thought curtly to herself. _All of Whiterun Hold is now looking for you. For your sake, I hope your Dragonborn luck lets you find this out sooner rather than later… _


	12. I Shall Be Angry

**S**umnyot turned, and stared at her old hide and fur tent-dwelling, just one more time. The half-breed woman still wore a displeased and slightly wounded look upon her face, even as she gaped for a second time, at her tent; it was still glowing within with firelight and it looked a very clean tent and comfortably safe. And Sumnyot gripped tightly at the bone-tipped spear in her small hand. She truly still did not want to go, if truth be told. As doing so, to Sumnyot, seemed it would be the beginning of the end to her freedom and mock-stability, perhaps even her own life, within the foreign lands of Skyrim.

_Yet, the only thing is,_ Sumnyot thought bleakly to herself, _that I simply __**must**__ go now._

Sumnyot then took a deep, balancing breath into her chest, and she determinedly began girding up her heart with the strong remembrances of the few, but newfound purposes and promises that she had so stalwartly made to herself. Sumnyot, frowning peevishly, crossly tapped her spear-butt hard against the ground. Ah! But she would certainly miss inhabiting the beautiful, wildly-solemn Reach lands. She would very much miss her humble home. Sumnyot too, did not know when she could come back to all of this, if ever, but she simply _had_ to go while she still had the strength in her heart to do such a thing.

Sumnyot finally turned, with a small growl, on her hide-booted heels and began slowly walking away from her home. There was a funny little lump forming in her throat, Sumnyot felt this with irritation, but she only pretended to herself that it was nothing but a lump of hot anger. And Sumnyot shook her braid-haired, black head, tersely.

"By Y'ffre," she muttered to herself. "If I find a forsworn witch in my tent when I come back… I shall be very angry. They seem to do nothing, but messily sacrifice goats all the day!"

At that, Sumnyot curtly righted the strap of her large and heavy haversack upon her shoulder. Gripping tight the shaft of her spear, and using it like a walking stick, Sumnyot boldly pressed on, making her way determinedly to the traveling roads. Though small and willowy, the Bosmeri-Imperial woman looked both wild and fierce as she suddenly crested the top of the grassy hillock she traversed. For, she was most heavily kitted, as she had not been in a very long time it seemed.

Shrouded in her cloak the colour of blue-night, garbed all in plundered fur and forsworn armour, in both bow and arrows, and with even the back of her slim hips fixed with two, crossed steel swords… Sumnyot looked more a Dragonborn than ever! Though, she did not know this herself, of course, nor would she like such a statement from anyone else, not even from the little sparrows that peeped at her curiously in the juniper trees.


	13. Because You Are Here

_***S**__umnyot _had come across her first, very out of place patrol, near a linking of mountains, which hid Falkreath Hold's beautiful Lake Ilinalta from all view in the north. Having thought that either brigands traveled the road in the dark with her, or perhaps merely travelers like herself, Sumnyot had silently hidden herself away just to be certain, and just to be safe.

And lo, upon two strange men passing her by quite unnoticed, Sumnyot had found that the men were garbed in the chain and cloth armours of guardsmen! And as they whispered raucously to one another upon the road, they spoke of both their task and their quarry. And too, Sumnyot even listened, as they flippantly spoke of their chagrin at not being allowed the luxury of lighting up their own torches, like some of the _other _`booby-guards' could. Then Sumnyot, who at first felt both inherently wary and irritated at her chance discovery, had of course, found out that _she_, the Dragonborn, was being hunted by all men and mer of Whiterun Hold.

Sumnyot had then, simply let the two guardsmen go on by, and she decidedly did not reveal herself to them, out of a growing sense of both simple amusement, and just a little bit of spite. She decided then, that she would even _still_ make her way into Whiterun. But, she would do so much to the surprise of the Jarl himself! And Sumnyot had smiled a little wickedly to herself then, feeling as if she were the fox about to play with and trick the very hounds chasing after her!

_By Y`ffre! _Sumnyot had thought, feeling both strangely interested and determined. _I shall, even still, step my feet right into Dragonsreach! If I can, I shall do it unbeknownst to all those looking about for me…_

And so, having not been able to travel any further along the roads eastwards, and certainly not wanting to scrabble about the base of the mountains to the south, Sumnyot had made her way off of the road, sometimes in a widely meandering, north-easterly route. While under the fortunately deep cover of darkness, Sumnyot flitted like nothing but an imperceptible shadow within the night. And she sneaked and slunk her way easily, over all the vast leagues of flatlands and slightly rocky open fields of Whiterun Hold.

And soon enough, Sumnyot did behold, like a great silly beacon in the darkness, a fire burning almost within the middle of a nowhere. Simply to sate her dark curiosity as to just who was camping about in the wilderness, Sumnyot had thought perhaps, it was a horse-thief or cutpurse loitering about, and she had crept her way noiselessly closer to the light of the stranger's camp.

Only to be very pleasantly surprised, indeed…*****

**X**

**S**umnyot smiled softly to herself, while she crouched down low upon her hide-booted feet, to hide in amongst a large tangle of tawny, leafy bracken. Before Sumnyot, only a short ways away, stood a very familiar good black horse. And near him upon the grassy ground, within a wavering pool of warm firelight, there was a similarly familiar sleeping form. Sumnyot, very heart-cheered indeed, called out to her quietly dozing, cloak-wrapped Housecarl.

"Lydia!" Sumnyot hissed grinningly. "Lydia, wake up, feather-head!" she called.

Sumnyot watched, her dark eyes looking openly elated, as Lydia leaned up upon her thin bedroll on the ground. The beautiful Nord woman's hand instantly strayed to the handle of her longsword, and her dark long hair, Sumnyot thought idly, looked pleasantly sleep-mussed, both wild and lovely.

"Lydia!" Sumnyot rasped out again then. And the half-breed woman helpfully waved her fur-braced hands a little, but only just enough to catch Lydia's flicking, worried eyes.

Lydia, at long last, noted the furtively waving person amongst the bushes of the little wood. And she simply stared open-mouthed for a moment. Then, Lydia left her sword alone and she sat up fully. Though tiredly slumped and astonished-looking, the Housecarl gaped over at Sumnyot intently. "Sumnyot?" Lydia muttered groggily, apparently still not _quite_ believing her own sleep-addled eyes. "How did you -,"

Sumnyot quickly interrupted her Housecarl with a shushing, flapping of her bracer-covered hands. "Here! First stamp out your fire, my friend!" Sumnyot requested whisperingly. "Lest a patrolman sees _two_ figures at your fire, when before there had only been the one."

Sumnyot watched from the cover of the ferns, as Lydia nodded and roused herself to her feet. Then the tall, cloaked and heavily steel armoured Nord easily stomped out her bright fire with the thick soles of her steel cuffed boots. When the blaze was nothing more but flicks of wavering sparks, reddish coals and plumes of smoky ash, Lydia looked enquiringly, through the sudden darkness, over to where Sumnyot had hidden herself.

Sumnyot in turn, grinning lightly, stood up then from the flourishing swell of bushes. And, to both of the companion's surprise, they simply met one another rapidly in the dark, and they seemed to immediately clasp tightly at each other. It was almost as if they both felt, that they had not seen one another for many years! But, neither one tended such thoughts, and Sumnyot simply braced Lydia securely around her full hips, and Lydia in her turn, grasped at Sumnyot firmly about her small, cloaked shoulders.

"I have been a fool and a coward," Sumnyot murmured inexplicably, but calmly, into Lydia's rough, black cloak-linens.

Lydia slightly faltered at her Thane's words, for a moment. And she simply gripped Sumnyot a little hearteningly tighter in her arms. "What is it that you mean?" Lydia asked afterwards, though of course, she could assume at what the half-breed woman was speaking of.

"I have come to help. I have been too long in keeping to myself, Lydia," Sumnyot replied, and she closed her eyes up softly while curled firmly inside of Lydia's arms. "I cannot, as you have so said to me before, truly deem myself a fair and honest warrior, if I stand by and do nothing when innocent's need the help that I can give to them."

Sumnyot felt Lydia's armoured chest quake a little, as though her heart had jumped, upon hearing such bluntly honest words. Lydia, Sumnyot noted then, seemed to begin to breathe a little more deeply than before. "And so, you mean that you have come to…" Lydia suddenly stopped herself there. Unknown to Sumnyot, she suddenly smiled in the darkness, and shook her dark-haired head with a surge of thrilled realisation.

Sumnyot only laughed deeply, amusedly, against Lydia. "Yes, yes," she said curtly. Then Sumnyot pulled away from her Housecarl's grasp. "It is so," Sumnyot reiterated. "I have come to play at being… the Dragonborn," she muttered unsurely. "Your ears and heart hear me true, my very eager Nordic friend!"

Lydia and Sumnyot looked and grinned widely at one another then, both of them feeling just timidly, strangely happy, for a moment. And Sumnyot herself, could not help but revel a little in the look of Lydia's openly smiling, utterly placated face. Lydia though, decidedly placed a gauntleted hand upon Sumnyot's angular cheek. "Then, this is truly a most joyous and honourable night, for all of Skyrim!" Lydia uttered happily. "You shall uplift the hearts of _so_ many more people, Sumnyot…"

Sumnyot easily leaned against Lydia's hand, but she only squinted up her blackish eyes funnily, as she smiled crookedly, wryly back at Lydia. "Do not you be so sure," she jibed quietly. "After all, I am being hunted about like a villain. As though I am nothing short of a criminal, who has been ever running from her executioner's readied noose!"

Lydia laughed at that. And Sumnyot reached up to gently lift away her Housecarl's gauntleted hand. Then, unexpectedly taking up her hand once more, Sumnyot led Lydia across the short, coarsely grassed ground. Then they stood stilled together, grasping at one another hand-to-hand, while they looked about the deeply night darkened, faintly starlit, plains of Whiterun Hold.

"What _is_ your great Jarl playing at?" Sumnyot asked curiously, with slightly slitted eyes. And she searched the landscape, staring out upon the fields, as well as at the tall and stately stone keep of Whiterun itself, which stood high off in the distance.

Lydia sighed deeply and shook her head glibly. "It is only that my Jarl Balgruuf, thought it time to find you. Time to perhaps attempt at persuading you, to go to the Greybeards," Lydia murmured, her voice hushed. "He has even sent away his own brother, as an envoy to High Hrothgar. Only just this morning, did he leave, as Jarl Balgruuf first wanted to attain the counsel and the blessing of the Greybeards, before his attempts to truly seek you out."

Sumnyot huffed shortly, somehow finding herself pleased at Lydia's words. "Lord _Hrongar_ has gone away, to the Throat of the World?" Sumnyot asked disbelievingly. And glancing upwards a little, Sumnyot caught Lydia nodding her head, and saw her smiling a small smile all her own. "Well and well," Sumnyot uttered laughingly, turning her braided-head away. "I do hope that man develops a few boils on his soft rear, from the cold found upon the mountain grounds!"

Lydia could not help but let out a chuckle at that. For she too, had thought many of the same things herself. "Yes," Lydia muttered, grinning just a little. "I suppose I hope in this as well, though it is very ill of me..."

"Ah," Sumnyot dismissed good-humouredly. Then the half-breed woman abruptly let go of her hold upon Lydia's hand, and she stooped to grab at something down upon the bedarkened ground. "Well, let us away to bed, Lydia," Sumnyot suggested as she straightened back up. "I have been traveling long. I have been hounded, and have had to skulk about all this day. I am very sorely tired, indeed!" Before turning away though, Sumnyot, grinning to herself all the while, abruptly took up both of Lydia's hands and she pressed into them, a little tundra cotton flower, which she had only just picked out from the ground.

As Sumnyot tersely ambled away, to go back over to the dead fire, Lydia gaped blinkingly at the small, pristinely white flower placed within her gauntleted hands. And she couldn't keep from softly smiling at the simple blossom. After a brief moment to herself though, Lydia went to join her peculiar Thane. Lydia found that Sumnyot had taken up her long spear from the bushes and laid it on the ground beside a small, furry pelt of goat-hide, upon which, Lydia supposed Sumnyot would sleep on for the night.

Lydia began biting at her lips then, pondering passing thoughts, while she absently twirled the little flower about between her fingers. "I... must confess to you, that it shall seem very suspicious," Lydia murmured thoughtfully, "if I myself am found to be the _one_ person who caught up the Dragonborn." Lydia shook her head idly then, and her long, dark hair wavered lightly over her pale face. "Certainly, Jarl Balgruuf shall know, that I have been dishonest with him..."

Sumnyot was sitting, comfortably cross-legged upon her warm, woolly pelt on the ground. And the felinely attractive, Bosmeri-Imperial woman only smiled crookedly up at Lydia. "Do not you even _begin_ to worry over such things," Sumnyot declared soothingly, her voice a little hard with sincerity. Then Sumnyot shook her black, braided-head from side to side, quite adamantly. "Do not," she said once again. "For the reasons I am even here," Sumnyot said, "is due, in no small measure, to your own good doings with me, Lydia. And, I shall tell your Jarl this myself in the morning, and he shall thank you! As you rightly do deserve, my friend."

Lydia, upon catching and fondly holding Sumnyot's keen dark stare, finally nodded at her Thane trustingly. Then, Lydia slowly knelt down upon her own bedroll, and she laid down upon her armoured back, close alongside her Thane. Sumnyot, after easily unbuckling her thick sword-laden belt, and after placing it within reach, she too laid herself down upon her fur pelt. And both women lay beside one another upon the grass, and they stared quietly up at the faintly star-spackled, very late night sky.

"Sumnyot," Lydia whispered speculatively, breaking the small stint of silence. "You have openly said to me this night, that you believe yourself to be a coward..."

Sumnyot blinked at Lydia's sudden words, and she kept gaping absently at the stars, while she guardedly replied. "Yes," she coaxed. "What of this?"

"Well," Lydia began. "I myself, truly, think this cannot be so," Lydia then fiddled with the flower lying upon her armoured belly. And she touched at the supple green stem of the tundra cotton, with naked fingertips.

Lydia reassuringly turned to look at Sumnyot. And the half-breed woman turned her own head towards Lydia. Sumnyot, Lydia found, was looking at her searchingly, a little warily almost. "Why do you think such a thing cannot not be so?" Sumnyot asked, cautiously watching her own tone.

"I think you are not truly a coward," Lydia replied, "Because, you _are_ _here _now, Sumnyot," she uttered undeniably. "I myself was taught as a youth, that for one to have the feelings of bravery, there must first be the feelings of fear..."

Sumnyot's dark eyes flitted questioningly then, slightly wonderingly over Lydia's solemnly beautiful face. But, the half-breed woman kept her thoughts to herself, and she said nothing in return to her Housecarl. Sumnyot seemed only to be able to look deeply, contemplatively, at Lydia. So, the Housecarl decided to speak out once more, again breaking the thick, but harmoniously shared, silence between them.

"Thank you for the flower, Sumnyot," Lydia whispered simply.

Sumnyot blinked for a moment. She still gazed into Lydia's night-darkened, glittering eyes as though she had been dumbstruck, quite unawares. "You are welcome." Was all Sumnyot could manage to quietly whisper back.


	14. Well Worth The Good

**L**ydia awoke in the dim, deep violet hue of very early morning. Awoken delicately, to faint, soft urging whispers and a touch upon her shoulder. As the Housecarl opened her eyes, and tiredly blinked at her crouching Thane, Sumnyot smiled. And then she ran the back of her cool fingers over Lydia's soft, lightly rose-coloured cheek.

"I am going now," Sumnyot whispered. "You must go to the crossing leading into Dragonsreach. At the break of dawn, I shall find you there."

Having been spoken to last night, Lydia nodded blearily as she understood what Sumnyot was speaking about. And before she could speak, Sumnyot leaned down and gently kissed Lydia. It was almost nothing, save a sweet, feather soft placing of lips upon lips, much like to a flower being kissed by a passing butterfly. Lydia simply could not fully open her eyes after that embrace, so Sumnyot stood, then she made away, darting swiftly over the dewy, green grasses of the field.

And Lydia herself, fell fast into sleep again. Her last thoughts only to sleep away the pale starlight that still remained in the lavender sky, and to remember to smile upon her Thane's curious gentleness later...

**X**

**T**he trickiest of parts for Sumnyot, was avoiding the handfuls of guardsmen that patrolled the roads and some of the land, while trying to hide and slink about within the ominous, purplish glow of a swiftly growing daylight. The easiest of parts for Sumnyot, was at last reaching the northwestern crags that held Dragonsreach on high, and climbing up the many jagged scarps and precipices up to their very top. Then, the crafty half-breed woman only had to wait about for Lydia, who would come very shortly along with the dawn. And after dawn did break, Sumnyot mused, she would then merely have to await her chance to slip, unnoticed, over the fragmented and ancient battlements surrounding the keep.

Which, Sumnyot would only do, after imbibing a small and special elixir made from the extracts of Nirnroot and ice wraith teeth. The elixir was a thing both expensive and rather uncommon amongst townspeople, Sumnyot knew this well. And the tincture had only been arbitrarily given to the Bosmeri-Imperial woman, by an old fisherman of the Reach, who sought to repay her for killing a band of forsworn that encroached near his river-home. But, Sumnyot knew the look on Jarl Balgruuf's face, when she entered into his house completely unbeknownst, would be well worth the good elixir's usage! It would be her last act of cheekiness, as a woman free. Then, she would willingly give herself over to the peoples of Skyrim.

And Sumnyot thought idly, while lolling and sitting beneath a sheltering of elevated rocks, that she had such a fine, pretty view of all the verdant Whiterun Hold lands, as well as a good view of the radiant aurora of coming daybreak. She thought to herself, that she of course would not mind, the little stint of waiting to be done this day. For everything seemed so lovely and easy, and Sumnyot only hoped that things would stay so.

**X**

**L**ydia pulled her black cloakhood over her head, before mounting her horse. The morning air was just a little bit chill, she thought, and would only grow chiller while she rode in to Whiterun. Then, Lydia slowly lifted up her leg, stuck the sole of her boot into a stirrup, and then she swung herself up into the saddle. Quickly nudging her horse with her boot-heels and clucking with her tongue, Lydia first set her mount off to an easy trot.

And, along with her own saddlebags and the few traveling things that bumped about behind the lip of her saddle, Lydia had found that Sumnyot apparently took to packing in her things as well upon the horse. The half-breed woman's bone-spear was stowed, with spare leather straps, along the length of Lydia's saddle, though this, tipped on a slight angle so that the spearhead would not poke at her horse's big rump. Sumnyot's large traveler's-haversack, and broad leather sword-belt too, was packed away easily amongst all Lydia's things.

Lydia decidedly prodded at her horse once more then, and she set him on into a smoother, coursing gallop. The rushing wind of the sudden motion seethed frigid against Lydia's face, and her body braced exultantly beneath her steel armour, with only a horsewoman's true sense of joy at doing something so wild and fleet with a beloved animal. As Lydia bent low, encouragingly into the wind, her cloakhood flew back uselessly, but Lydia only smiled a little, as she let her horse simply begin to run his feet, as she felt he so vigorously wished to do.

And while she and her powerful black horse tore out over the plains to Whiterun, Lydia indolently realised that her heart was a little excited, as well as indulgent, but not only because of her pleasant horse-ride. No, today, Lydia thought as she oscillated fluidly atop her horse, she would truly see the _agreeable_ coronation of Skyrim's most reluctant Dragonborn. And though the Nord woman was loth to think of her Thane's plans, and the comeuppances sure to come from her own secrecies concerning Sumnyot Paitr, thinking of seeing that wild woman at last go off to the Greybeards was enough to still her Housecarl, Nordic soul.

**X**

**U**pon quickly reaching the quaint stables outside of the walls of Whiterun city, Lydia had corralled her exercise-gleaming horse, then she asked for him to be brushed down and watered and otherwise attended to for the day. Being a well-known Housecarl of Whiterun, and a loyal frequenter of the stables, Lydia did not have to pay the horse-master for his services out of her own pocket, nor did the horse-master flippantly urge Lydia to take her traveling things along with her, when she bade to him that she would return for them sometime later. Then Lydia, energized and uplifted by her run with her horse, made her way stolidly up to the entry gates of Whiterun.

After passing on through the opened city-gates, and while ambling inside the charming village she knew so very well, the streets still seemed to be just a little sleepy this early in the morn. Save for a small bit of bustle as wandering stall vendors began opening their booths along the byway of the marketplace. And too, the priest of Talos near the Gildergreen Tree and Jorrvaskr was vociferously beginning to recite his morning prayers.

Lydia, a hand naturally idling upon the pommel of her longsword, strolled casually along the spacious cobbled lanes. Then, after pacing round the girth of the Gildergreen, Lydia began stepping her way up the grand stone stairs leading up to the keep of Dragonsreach. A few passing guards nodded politely to Lydia as she happened by them, and she returned their gestures silently.

Then when Lydia, tentatively and slowly, stepped her way under the roof of the covered bridge, which led patrons on directly to the doors of Dragonsreach, Lydia idled for a scant heartbeat of a moment. Then, the tall Nord woman felt the ghost of a hand press firmly at the middle of her cloaked, armoured back. Knowing Sumnyot was somehow behind her then, Lydia tersely nodded to the two stationed guards waiting at the door. And they began to pull upon the great iron rings set upon the doors, and the two burly men gradually opened up the entrance barring the way into Dragonsreach, with a great amount of portentous creaking...


End file.
